Books on leadership are flying off the shelves and managers are flying in to leadership courses around the world. Is this helping them, their organisations and wider society? Or might some of the advice and training do more harm than good?
More research on leadership is exposing some of the limiting assumptions of mainstream ideas and teaching on leadership and its development. This is coming to be known as “Critical Leadership Studies” (CLS).
This week I’m attending the Lead in Asia conference in Indonesia and will be presenting a summary of CLS and what it could mean for non-Western scholarship and training. Ive written the paper with Richard Little of Impact International and Dr Neil Sutherland of Bristol Business School. I’m hoping to learn of critical approaches already underway in the region and also sense the way critical social theory might be further utilised in the management academe in East Asia.
You can download the pdf here: Leadership Impasse.
We base some of our leadership courses at IFLAS on these ideas, including the PGC in Sustainable Leadership and the new MA in Sustainable Leadership Development.
Feedback welcomed, especially via the Sustainable Leaders group on LinkedIn.
Professor Jem Bendell 